Lux Interior (born
Erick Purkhiser) and
Poison Ivy (born
Kristy Wallace) met in
Sacramento, California in 1972. Due to their common artistic interests and shared devotion to record collecting, they decided to form The Cramps.
Lux took his
stage name from a car ad, and Ivy claimed to have received hers in a dream (she was first
Poison Ivy Rorschach, taking her last name from that of the inventor of the
Rorschach test). In 1973, they moved to
Akron, Ohio, and then to
New York in 1975, soon entering into
CBGB's early punk scene with other emerging acts like
The Ramones, Patti Smith, and
Television. The lineup in 1976 was
Poison Ivy Rorschach,
Lux Interior, Bryan Gregory (guitar) and his sister Pam "Ballam" (drums).
In a short period of time, the Cramps changed drummers twice;
Miriam Linna (later of
Nervus Rex, the Zantees, and
the A-Bones) replaced
Pam Ballam, and Nick Knox (formerly with the
Electric Eels) replaced Linna in September 1977. In the late 1970s, the Cramps briefly shared a rehearsal space with
The Fleshtones, and performed regularly in New York at places like
CBGB's and
Max's Kansas City, releasing two indie singles produced by
Alex Chilton at
Ardent Studios in
Memphis in 1977 before being signed by
Miles Copeland to the young
I.R.S. Records label. In June of 1978 they gave a free concert for patients at the
California State Mental Hospital in Napa, recorded on a
Sony Portapak video camera by the San Francisco collective
Target Video and later released as
Live at Napa State Mental Hospital. They released the two singles again on their 1979
Gravest Hits EP, before Chilton brought them back that year to Memphis to record their first full length album,
Songs The Lord Taught Us, at
Phillips Recording, operated by former
Sun Records label owner
Sam Phillips.
After relocating to Los Angeles,
Kid Congo Powers of
The Gun Club joined the Cramps on guitar. But while recording their second LP,
Psychedelic Jungle, the band and Miles Copeland began to dispute royalties and creative rights. The ensuing court case prevented them from releasing anything until 1983, when they recorded
Smell of Female live at New York's
Peppermint Lounge; Kid Congo Powers subsequently departed. Mike Metoff of
The Pagans (cousin of Nick Knox) was the final second guitarist - albeit only live - of the Cramps' pre-bassist era.
In 1985 the Cramps recorded a one-off track for the horror movie "
The Return of the Living Dead" called "Surfin' Dead", on which Ivy played bass as well as guitar. With the release of 1986's
A Date With Elvis, the Cramps permanently added a bass guitar to the mix, but had trouble finding a suitable player, so Ivy temporarily filled in as the band's bassist.. The album featured an increased focus on sexual double entendre, and met with differing fates on either side of the Atlantic: in
Europe, it sold over 250,000 copies, while in the
U.S. the band had major problems finding a record company prepared to release it.
It was not until 1986 that the Cramps found a suitable permanent bass player:
Candy del Mar (of
Satan's Cheerleaders), who made her recorded debut on the raw live album
ROCKINNREELININAUCKLANDNEWZEALANDXXX, which was followed by the studio album
Stay Sick in 1990. The Cramps hit the top 40 singles chart in the UK for the first and only time with "Bikini Girls with Machine Guns"; Ivy posed as such both on the cover of the single and in the
promotional video for the song. The Cramps went on to record many more albums and singles through the 1990s and 2000s, for various labels and with varying degrees of success.
In 1995 The Cramps appeared on the TV-series
Beverly Hills, 90210 at the halloween episode
Gypsies, Cramps and Fleas.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0522816/ They played 2 Songs in show: "Mean Machine" and "Strange Love". Lux started the song saying "Hey girls and ghouls, ready to wake up the dead?".
In honor of the excess of The Cramps, there is displayed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a shattered bass drum head that Lux's head went through during a live show.
